


Hidden and Revealed

by NatatBlue



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dom/sub, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 06:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3757774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NatatBlue/pseuds/NatatBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson ponders his flatmate and their future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden and Revealed

**Hidden and Revealed**

**by**

**Kor**

 

 

John stood at the window, gazing down at the bustle of nightlife on Baker Street. His posture was rigid, feet slightly apart, hands clasped at his back. This pose betrayed military in him, not only to Sherlock’s sharp eye, but even to ordinary people. 

Ordinary people. John tasted the word around his mind. When did he start referring to the rest of the world as ordinary? He was ordinary. He had always been ordinary. His parent were ordinary, so were his friends and everyone John knew. Yet, he had never thought of them as ordinary. They were just people – some smarter, some less, some kinder, some crueler, some usual, some more eccentric. But no one was quite like Sherlock. No, no one was like that man. John had never thought of other people as ordinary, but it was enough to meet Sherlock and all of a sudden the world was filled with ordinary people, yet also with wonders beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.  

John stirred slightly, as if coming to his senses from a long dream. He had been oblivious to his environment and maybe even to his own thoughts for God knows how long. The night had now firmly settled over the city, covering everything in the thick shadows of darkness, the light from the street illumination serving just to emphasize the contrast. 

The gentle sound of music carried over from the living room where Sherlock was playing violin. John listened. No not playing violin - thinking. Sherlock never played the instrument for the sake of it. The music was the stimulus, the pathway that connected the bits and pieces of incredible amounts of information in Sherlock’s brain. Whether it was eliciting any emotion in Sherlock remained a mystery. Nevertheless, to John, the music was bewitching. It made him stop thinking and feel. He tilted his head to one side, closed his eyes and allowed the enchanting echo of the music grab at his soul. It was beautiful; it wept one minute and sang with joy the other. In his mind’s eyes John could see Sherlock’s elegant fingers wrapped around the handle of the instrument, his head leaning to one side, cradling the instrument to his shoulder, his eyes closed with the rapid darting behind the eyelids betraying the activeness of his mind. 

John opened his own eyes, forcing himself to snap out of his thoughts, out of the desire to walk into the next room, wrap his hand in Sherlock’s hair, jerking his head to expose his throat, as he watched those cerulean eyes flatter open and look at him in utter astonishment. Sherlock was never surprised, never caught off guard. He was planning, scheming and manipulating all the time. But at that moment he would be surprised. John knew exactly what would make him lower his guard, what would bewilder him and surprise him, leaving him off balance and vulnerable, unable to hide behind his sharp intellect and cold calculations. 

John knew it. But he had never used it. Never done it to the man he considered his best friend. He had thought it unfair to Sherlock. Maybe even to their friendship and the trust the man had put in him.His hesitation had left the man vulnerable to that woman. 

Irene Adler. Her name bounced around John’s mind, making the anger rise in him. His jaw clenched to the point of his teeth aching, his fist tightened, the white blossoming over the hills of his knuckles. She has swept in and taken what John had been guarding from his own self. Irene Adler and John Watson had more than just Sherlock in common. They both knew how to dominate and own. And they both had seen Sherlock down to his very soul. But where John had been careful to protect, she had pursued her prey like a hawk. She had read Sherlock the same way John had and she’d done what John hadn’t dared. 

Sherlock had been too precious to John for games. He should have seen that wouldn’t stop someone else. He should have known someone would have the sight to see what he did. That someone would use it against Sherlock. Mycroft had most certainly known what John was and what his little brother was. It was no coincidence that Mycroft had wanted John by Sherlock’s side, wanted him as Sherlock’s watchdog. He knew what John could do. 

John knew his own hesitance had caused Sherlock’s hurt. Had he not been so hesitant with his dominance Irene Adler would have stood no chance of scoring a victory. If he had fully claimed Sherlock like he had wanted from nearly the first day they met, Irene would have had no hold over him. Instead, plundered by his own lingering trauma and taken aback by Sherlock’s extraordinariness John had held himself back. 

John turned away from the window, and leaned against the windowsill. The shadows from the lights cast by the passing cars in the street danced on the walls, making it look like a stage for a macabre ghostly dance. 

Sherlock’s torment was his doing. He thought he was protecting when he was exposing Sherlock. John was honest enough to recognize he had dominated Sherlock. Perhaps even from the very first day they had met. He had done it in a worst possible way--in bits and pieces. Not fully, not openly like Sherlock craved without even understanding it. John had prodded and probed Sherlock into certain behaviors. An apology here, some words of gratitude there, holding his acerbic tongue in another instance. Sherlock never even noticed, never questioned, just followed. But of course he would and John knew it. It was Sherlock’s unfulfilled need to be controlled, the need that John had fostered with maybe unconscious, subtle play and had left unsatisfied. John had been too worried about Sherlock’s emotional ability to consent to it, so he had told himself he should hold back. But perversely, he had had no problem in modeling his friend’s behavior in public. He had failed and Sherlock had suffered. He had laid Sherlock bare for Adler’s picking. He shouldn’t be angry with her. He wasn’t angry with her. He was angry with himself. She had played the game beautifully, and the player in John recognized it and admired it. 

But it was Sherlock and that was what had shocked John to his core. Sherlock who was smarter than any other man John had ever encountered. Sherlock, who was truly extraordinary and who made the rest of the world look ordinary. Sherlock with his constant calm and unperturbed eyes, with his cold and calculating mind. Sherlock who never was caught off balance and was impossible to ambush. That was the Sherlock to the world. John had known from the day one what would chase that all away. 

As Sherlock stood there analyzing John in mere seconds, John had done his own analyzing. No, not immediately, he had been too stricken those first seconds, but later, just a bit later on, he’d seen what Sherlock was hiding. Sherlock Holmes—highly functioning sociopath, the man had called himself. It instantly spoke to John. He couldn’t say if Sherlock was indeed a sociopath, he didn’t even really care if he were. But he instantly realized Sherlock had no concept of emotional interaction. Sherlock, with his dazzling mind was blind to what the ordinary people did so easily. He couldn’t read emotions. His entire brilliant method of deduction was just a way to cope with an emotional handicap. Sherlock was unable to form an opinion of someone based on his emotional response to that person. People were a mystery to the great Sherlock Holmes, so he had invented a method to cope with it. Sherlock was reading the physical clues in order to understand who and what they were, because he had no other means of knowing and interacting. 

John had known this on the first day they met. He’d tucked the information away, too afraid of what he could do with it. He had arrogantly assumed no one else would see it. Irene Adler did. She had arrived naked, depriving Sherlock of any means of reading her. That one gesture had instantly put Sherlock under her spell. And John was the one who had allowed for it. 

Well, no more. He would allow for it no more. He purposefully made his way to the door and jerked it open, nearly taking it off the ancient and rusty hinges.

 


End file.
